It was recently reported at Geeks3D that they are working on a new version of their PhysX FluidMark Benchmark that would be supporting Multi-Core CPU Support for running the PhysX calculations. Geeks3D has now posted an updated showing the new version of PhysX FluidMark running on 16 cores and a screenshot showing the new GUI that allows you to select the numbers of CPU cores your processor has before you run PhysX FluidMark.
This is definitely exciting stuff, PhysX FluidMark is a great program to test out your new PhysX setup quickly and run benchmark/stability tests on your dedicated PhysX Card. Keep checking in here at GamePhys and Geeks3D for more information.
I’m still coding the new FluidMark with multi-core CPU support and in order to test with more than 4 cores (my dev station really sucks with its 2 CPU cores and my test bench is a little bit better with 4 CPU cores) I asked to David from french website PC Inpact to play with the unstable version of FluidMark on a 16-core CPU.
As you can see on the screenshot, the 16 cores are fully loaded
Currently I have some little problems with multi-core support and PhysX GPU (there are some crashes when hardware PhysX is used with multithreaded simulation) but I’m about to find a solution…
I’m currently updating Geeks3D’s PhysX FluidMark tool and from my last tests, multi-core CPU support in PhysX seems to be ok (that confirms what NVIDIA said in this news)… At least on my dev station with an ATI Radeon HD 5770 and an AMD X2 3800+.
In case you are not familiar with PhysX FluidMark it is a free to download PhysX benchmarking and stability tool perfect for quickly testing out a new PhysX setup to make sure PhysX was installed and up and running correctly, you can download it here and a YouTube video showing it in action was embedded below.
PhysX FluidMark is a physics benchmark based on NVIDIA PhysX engine. This benchmark performs a fluid simulation by imitating the renderering of lava. Real physics parameters such as viscosity are used. SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics) algorithm is enabled to increase the realism of the simulation.
This benchmark exploits OpenGL for graphics acceleration and requires an OpenGL 2.0 compliant graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 5/6/7/8/9/GTX200 (and higher), AMD/ATI Radeon 9600+, 1k/2k/3k/4k (and higher) or a S3 Graphics Chrome 400 series.
Fudzilla has done some nice hybrid PhysX testing, using a ATI Radeon HD5870 mixed with a 9800GT for dedicated PhysX and then the GTX285 and the same 9800GT for dedicated PhysX. Fudzilla then uses the Batman: Arkham Asylum PhysX benchmark in the demo to test performance with the different combination of the cards. Though the article is pretty simple it is great to see the different setups and how they perform with and without the dedicated PhysX card, check it the rest of the article here.
So, if you for instance own a Geforce GTX 260, you can use a cheaper Geforce such as 9600GT to handle your PhysX calculations. In practice, it’s as simple as choosing the dedicated PhysX card in Nvidia’s driver.
Unfortunately for some, Nvidia kept the technology to itself, so Radeon cards aren’t supported, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. PhysX support is automatically blocked upon detection of Radeon cards, but luckily, there are workarounds and various forums have been pretty loud about it for a while.
We recently included Batman: Arkham Asylum game in our gaming benchmarks, and while the game supports PhysX effects, we usually use only the results we got without PhysX. The reason hides behind Radeon cards which don’t score a good enough framerate when PhysX is on, so there’s no point in comparing them. Since it’s not very fair to exclude Nvidia’s strengths from our tests and our trusted readers have requested Radeon results with PhysX effects on, we decided to do it. So, we embarked on what would many fans of green and red camps probably called sacrilege – we assigned a Geforce card to handle PhysX and as our primary card we used a Radeon.
Ever since we saw the Glowball PhysX demo and the Floating Castle Physics Demo running on Tegra 3 powered tablets we have been pretty excited about physics on Tegra powered devices. Back in November NVIDIA announced the released of their new Quad-Core mobile Tegra 3 chip that uses “four CPU cores and its new GeForceRead More
I know that Batman Arkham City has been out for awhile now and this is old news but as I have been extremely busy with work and finishing up school I never got a chance to post these. These are some cool Batman Arkham City PhysX comparison on/off videos from both EVGA and YouTube userRead More
Krishna Kumar – YouTube user krishx007 who runs gfxguru.net has made a pretty cool physics/PhysX demo level with Unity 3D called Physics Wonderland. The level is basically a huge playground with PhysX objects that you can destroy and play around with to show off the different PhysX features in Unity 3D. Check it out belowRead More
The Game Developers Conference 2012 is going to have a session that really interests us. The “Physics for Games Programmers” session/tutorial is going to cover the “tools and techniques developers should know when implementing physics in their games.” According to the information on the GDC 2012 site, the session will take place on Tuesday, MarchRead More
With all of the excitement about rumored hardware being used in the next-generation consoles, some very disappointing news has come today. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony has no plans to unveil the Sony Playstation 4 at this years E3 and is going to stick with the 10-year life cycle plan. If thisRead More
Here are some cool physics videos that have been uploaded to YouTube over the past week. Cryengine 3 Tornado Physics by club4ghz UDK – Destructible objects and Physics! by Shotbix07 Ice Engine Destruction Test by LordOfTheBytes
I came across a few cool Havok physics videos on YouTube. YouTube user kosteckip has made a pretty cool Castle Siege type demo using PhysX and Havok physics with physics based water, cloth, and destruction. Meanwhile, the official Havok Physics YouTube channel has uploaded a series of Havok Simulation videos and one interesting video showsRead More
Maximum PC has a nice article up about the top game engines being used to create today’s games. Along with the engines they also pointed out the top Middleware being used and PhysX and Havok were listed as the top physics Middleware. Check out the entire article here. From Gamers, Start Your Engines! 6 TopRead More
Phymec is making some cool physics tools for Bullet Physics and Blender to enable some awsome fracture and destruction effects. Two awesome videos showing this off have been uploaded to YouTube. The first shows off the creation of the fracture objects in Blender and the newer video is an awesome collection of fracture objects beingRead More
An interesting rumor has surfaced this past week that Microsoft is developing two next-gen Xbox 720 consoles. According to the rumor on TECHSPOT, Microsoft “is said to be developing an entry-level system as well as a true next-generation hardcore gaming console.” What is important to us for the future of physics is the reports thatRead More
I posted about this awesome level several months ago – Some Cool NVIDIA APEX Physics Tests Done with the UDK now mfsksa, who is the creator of this level, has given me the UDK files required to play the Apex PhysX test level he made. I made a cool video showing it off some moreRead More
Ever since we posted the Battlefield 3 Physics and Destruction Videos with the BF3 destruction video showing the Antenna in Caspian Border coming down we have been wondering how to do this or when it would be allowed through a patch. Today we have learned through an awesome YouTube Video that the main Antenna canRead More
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